


Must Be Gone

by orphan_account



Series: Hey Lover [4]
Category: Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Actually Unrequited Love, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In all his stories, Alex always kills the singer.





	Must Be Gone

_In the end of the story, the singer always dies. _

Alex keeps the pages after pages he’s written in an old wooden box. Once, Taylor saw one of them before he had the chance to chuck it away. She didn’t find it interesting. Alex took the page back in a hurry and smiled at her casual grumble. “Babe, what’s that for?”

He didn’t try to explain. There’s a line across which even his most beloved ones lose their patience with him. Alex put the new story on top of the expanding pile he had accumulated. After a grating click, the heavy lid shielded those words from light. 

They agree that some part of him is better to be kept away. 

+

When Alex writes, he digs into the void underneath his own rib cage.

Sometimes it gets so dark and deep that he struggles to float up. That’s when he calls. More often or not, Alex remembers pressing on screen and the next thing he knows, Miles is within the room, lifting him up from the solitude.

Alex opens the door for him. Miles has a key, but Alex wants one more minute with him, even just to waste it on walking from the door to the bedroom. “You are here.” Alex sighs. Although Miles never lets him down, every time it still feels like a blessed surprise.

Miles greets him happily. Loud. Carefree. No matter if he’s feeling like it or not. He’s doing this more for Alex than anything. And they both know it. There’s nobody better than him when Alex is having a particularly bad day, feeling more attractive to his curtained, dullish bedroom than the rest of the world. Miles comes, makes his out of place loud entrance, and immediately blends into the comforting air in Alex’s room.

He sits down and reads Alex’s stories, in which Alex kills himself repeatedly.

+

_The singer is unlovable._

No one likes the main character in his stories, and Alex wonders about how much of this outcome is caused by his tenebrous writing. No one except Miles, who asks Alex how the _singer _is doing in this current one. Miles asks as if that matters, and he truly cares. 

Miles has read through the huge piles with unreal concentration. Alex sits next to him and drinks martini. Sometimes tea, depending on the time of the day. The room will never be silent. Alex usually puts on a record or turns on the TV, letting the noise blanket them.

Alex is comfortable with Miles reading them, because with Miles there’s no need to explain.

Occasionally, a line does Miles’ head in and he’d frown in the middle of a story, biting on his nails. Alex drinks him in. He watches obsessively whenever Miles gets so involved that those hazel eyes are lightened by tears. Alex feels what he feels, even if in reality he doesn’t feels nothing.

+

“…probably better to call a therapist instead of me, you know. It will help.”

Miles tries to talk to him. In some days Alex agrees and makes false promises. In some days Alex peers into the room and keeps quiet. Miles doesn’t seem to mind both. In fact, these days he’s not against any options Alex offers, no matter it’s a desperate, brutal kiss against the kitchen table, or a solely friendly chat on the sofa with a good three inches in between them, neither touching nor gazing.

Alex asks him back after Miles mentions the singer in his stories. “Do you truly have no limits, Miles? You’ll let me take every bit of you and abuse it extravagantly until you run out, is that right?”

Miles laughs, shamelessly proving that he has zero problem letting Alex use him. Instead of answering he says, “Al, I’ve missed you, too.”

“We see each other all the time.” 

“Not enough.” Miles corrected him. He sounds serious.

He sounds honest.

+

_The singer is incapable of love._

“You used to go to that café every day. The owner, he kept saying you were his favorite costumer, remembered that? They made horrible coffee. Nobody liked it. It tasted like ashes suspended in cold water.” It was one of those days where Alex cannot decide if he wants Miles close or to be left alone. Miles has already put one shoe on when Alex suddenly changed his mind and demanded him to stay. Begged him to, to be precise. But Alex managed to act nonchalantly at least.

Miles took off his coat once again and kneeled in front of the sofa, on which Alex curls solemnly.

“It’s like that, don’t you think?” Alex gestures between them when Miles looks up into his eyes. He recalls. “You took pity on this poor guy and willingly drank shit coffee for years.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad! I liked the coffee…I really did. You just need to get used to the extra strong flavor.” Miles smiles, running his fingers through the messy curls resting on Alex’s forehead and tugs them back behind his ear. Suddenly he says, “You remembered that bakery in Liverpool, the one that I took you to when we first went down together? I was a regular. There’s one baker. Pretty as hell, talented, and made me fav cupcakes ever. Seeing her behind kitchen window made me so weirdly happy. I didn’t even care what I was shoving in me mouth.” 

Alex inhaled sharply. He feels a bit lightheaded with the picture Miles just put in his mind. And then he flies up to the sky when Miles continues.

“This is more like that, I’d say.” He mimics what Alex just did a minute ago. However, he doesn’t try to play it cool. On the contrary, Miles speaks with passion on his face and tender in his voice. “Like that, but not exactly the same… you know what I mean?” 

Alex understands perfectly. And that's what scares him the most.

+

Miles points at the end of the story. His fingers trace the printing ink and Alex feels the touch across his own chest, even though they are currently very far apart. He says, “Can you let me do it then?”

“Do what?”

“Save your singer.” Miles shrugs like that’s the most obvious thing ever spoken and Alex should have guessed. “I kinda wanna write this one with you.”

“You can’t.” Alex clarifies. “I mean...you can’t save him.”

He earns a heavy, agonized look from Miles, who silently gets up from the chair and walks across the room, lighting himself a cigarette against the open window. Outside Alex’s living room people are living their lives. Inside, Alex writes stories that will never see the daylight. Miles exhales the deadly smog that can potentially kill him in real life, and then turns back and crosses his arms. He challenges Alex, “How’d you know?” 

Alex has no answer for him, just like he has no answer for himself. “Because I know you.”

“Well, then you don’t know me well enough, Al.” Miles walks back to him. He takes one step forward and then another, until Alex’s back is pressed into the wall and there’s no distance left to run. “Try me.”

Alex breaks a little bit under the provocation. His voice is all shaking. “I can’t, Miles.” 

Miles breaks a little bit also, when Alex pushes him away for yet another time. _How many times does he have left until Miles shatters and gives up on him? _For this time, luckily Alex doesn’t have to wait for long before Miles resigns and put his arms around Alex’s waist, pulling him close. He murmurs in Alex’s ear. “Do you want me to go?” 

The bitterness out from those lips seeps into Alex’s scalp and sinks down, making his throat too sour to reply.

_One more time_. Alex lies to himself. One last time and he’ll quit asking for Miles’ presence. But now he painfully needs it, and here Miles is already, with him, beside him, ready to fix things and to love him. Alex knows he’ll get what he wants simply by saying it out loud. How can he not fall into the loop gratefully?

“You can stay.” He doesn’t really mean to lay his head down on Miles’ shoulder, but it happens before Alex can recognize himself. He can't recognize himself easily these days.

All of a sudden Alex is exhausted. “Can we…can we lay down?”

“Of course. Anything, Al.” Miles drops a kiss on his temple. Every word he says triggers a tingling sensation and puts a dent in Alex’s soul. The moments they have are temporary, but the marks Miles leaves are permanent. Somehow it makes Alex genuinely happier, knowing this way his soul won’t be bare no matter how empty he may feel.


End file.
